Anatolian Turkish

Manti — minuscule beef-filled dumplings (the Kayseri ideal is forty per spoonful) — drowned in garlic-yogurt and red-pepper-flake butter. Börek in every form (su böreği water-cooked sheets layered with cheese, sigara böreği cigar-rolled). A skewer of Köfte over a charcoal mangal, with grilled tomato and pul biber sumac. Etli Ekmek (Konya's flat meat-topped bread, longer than the plate). Tarhana Soup — fermented yogurt-and-grain dried into chips, reconstituted as a sour winter broth. Bread is everywhere; a Turkish meal is unimaginable without it.

Within Turkish cuisine, the Anatolian central plateau is the heartland — wheat, lamb, dairy. Cities like Kayseri, Konya, Sivas anchor it. The Seljuk-Ottoman culinary lineage runs through here: yogurt as a drink (ayran) and a sauce, bulgur and rice as the grain duo, lamb and chicken as the proteins. Less seafood than Aegean Turkish, less chili-heat than Southeast Turkish, less Caucasian-influence than Black Sea Turkish. The plateau cooking is pastoral and grain-heavy — what Anatolia eats every day.